It’s not just that they both have first-name recognition. The government’s new leadership team may be one heck of a good mix for more important reasons.
Progressive types have been intoxicated by Malcolm Turnbull ever since he became Prime Minister. Enter Barnaby Joyce. He’s the tonic to Malcolm’s gin. He sobers up the Coalition and the country. He reminds Malcolm that another constituency matters, too, and that this more social conservative exists not just on the backblocks of Cunnamulla. He’s also a tonic to the increasingly sterile world of modern politics where foibles and quirks are not just ironed out; they’re starched so heavily, politicians look like cardboard cut-outs.
Joyce has something rare in politics. It’s call authenticity. Just as the US Supreme Court once said of obscenity that it’s hard to define but easy to spot, it’s the same with authenticity. You know it when you see it. And it’s never been more alluring to voters awash in the torrent of highly scripted, tightly disciplined political chatter.
Sure, we hear the yakety-yak of politicians, but who really remembers any of it? Three-word slogans wash over us. Tony Abbott suffered the consequences of that verbal disease. Loquacious outpourings of nothingness are equally brain-numbing. Bill Shorten talks a lot but what is he actually trying to say?
etc.etc.
It’s the same in politics. It has been a long time between wickets on the authenticity front. Bob Hawke. John Howard. And then nothing for seven years. Howard’s replacement turned out to be the greatest political chameleon the country has seen. Kevin Rudd won an election and then lost us. Global warming, the great moral issue of our time, was dumped when politics made it less moral. The Labor chameleon’s language changed 180 degrees depending on his audience and even Wayne Swan could take no more, telling us Rudd had no Labor values. Then we had to endure the “real Julia”. What higher humiliation or greater indictment can there be when you have to admit that voters have no idea who you are? Alas, nothing real came from that 2010 election strategy because it was just that: a strategy. When the real Julia fronted a Christian conference saying she was a staunch defender of traditional marriage, most people went: “Yeah, right. Pull other one.”
Fakery had slain two Labor prime ministers because, as Graham Richardson famously said, the mob will always work you out.
etc.etc.
Authenticity alone doesn’t make a successful leader. But it’s a good start in politics if people listen when you talk. Just ask Rudd, Gillard and Abbott about that. Oh, and Shorten too.
The authenticity drought can’t be broken soon enough. We need more old-fashioned grit and less gobbledygook.
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One of the few political journalists that actually gets it, and puts it in print so "we can get it"!!
